Richard Masur Quotes

I think that casting is probably the most important thing in television production.

People don't always understand the way it works with casting. TV projects tend to be commissioned to screen at a particular time of year, so your shooting dates are chosen to meet that. And then the casting is a matter of choosing from the actors who are available for those dates.

I had to battle it out with all the usual suspects and whatnot and go to the callback. I was lucky that (writer-director) John (Levine) and I were sort of these two white-boy hip-hop-heads from New York. I think that alone got me in the door.

Normally, you cast a pilot, and you have to make compromises about being political about who you cast.

'Arrested Development' is great; Mitch Hurwitz is great. Plus, it's the one show I've ever had where, on the small parts, he just let me cast people.

I was 16 when I auditioned for the series '8 Simple Rules.' They cast the kids first.

If I could film, we'd film every episode of 'Doctor Who' in New York. I have an affinity with the city. It has some wonderful locations and it is devastatingly vast and huge. Central Park looks amazing on camera.

'Orphan Black' tends to, for their auditions, shroud it in secrecy and change names.

I think that the very fact that CBS fought and fought and fought in Texas, in New York.

Now that I know what goes into making a pilot, keeping it on the air, and keeping your fans, I'm at a point now where I do a pilot and just hope for the best. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out.

So many people wanted an adventure. It was really more about finding the cast that I wanted for 'Expedition Impossible,' so it had good diversity, and people could really say, 'Oh, there's the firefighters, there's the team of cops, there's the grandpa' - so that you can really relate with them.

I was fortunate enough to book a pilot, and we just got picked up for a midseason replacement for ABC. It's called 'Romantically Challenged,' and I'm going to be playing Alyssa Milano's little sister. The other actor in it is Kyle Bornheimer from 'Worst Week' - he's hilarious.

It's kind of interesting when you sign on to a show because you're basically signing on to play a character because you only really see the first episode of the show.

You audition, and then you go and do what's called a test, your network test. So you have to go in front of the network and do it, and the network has to sign off on you.

The editors and the creators of 'The Bachelor' and 'The Bachelorette,' they are so good at casting and at finding these young, beautiful lunatics to go on the show.

I would like to see more of the making of just regular television shows. Like the casting process. I think it's so fascinating to watch the actors come in and see how they discuss everybody afterwards. It's a crazy world that has no rhyme or reason.

I've always lived in New York; I never moved to L.A. I was developing and producing and writing a pilot for a year. That took me out of everything for over a year. When that sadly didn't go forward, I shot 'Black Mirror' right after that.

Woody Harrelson played a long-term love interest of Debra Messing's; I think it was for a whole season. They almost cast Nick in that part. They almost had given to him. But at the eleventh hour, Jim Burrows put in a call to Woody, and he said he would do it.

Jeff Wachtel, who was the main reason our show came back, and also got picked up to begin with, is from the New York theater.

I would do the morning show and then just walk over to the network side of the building here at ABC in New York and sit down and start it up again and introduce the 10 contestants, and then introduce the 10 - the fastest finger question, and pick one of them, put them in the seat before you finally got to asking them the questions.

When we were doing 'The Office,' there was an area backstage where they worked on hair and makeup, and I was sitting there waiting to get ready to go on, and one of the writers went, 'I want you to audition for 'Bad Teacher.'' I went, 'Okay!'

When you're casting a show, you have your idea of who you want it to be, and of course, those are going to be very well-known names.

'Sex and the City' didn't change the show because it was an international sensation. They kept it in New York.

When I got the first e-mail suggesting we cast Zooey Deschanel in 'New Girl', I thought, 'That's exactly right.' In the pilot of 'Modern Family', when Cam is holding up the baby with the 'Lion King' theme, it was very clear we had something special.

For 'Supergirl,' I actually didn't audition.